


a rose by any other name (would taste just as bitter)

by heyimflamel



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Assassination Attempt(s), Attempt at Humor, BAMF Hibari Kyouya, BAMF Sawada Tsunayoshi, BAMF Vongola Tenth Generation, Bonding, Broken Vongola Tenth Generation, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Codependency, Corruption, Dark, Dark Sawada Tsunayoshi, Descent into Madness, Desperation, Dubious Morality, Dying Will Flames (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Dysfunctional Relationships, Eldritch, Eldritch Sawada Tsunayoshi, Emotional Baggage, Extended Metaphors, Families of Choice, Flame Sealing (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Gen, Half-Formed Bonds, Hurt No Comfort, It Gets Worse, Italian Mafia, Kinda, Mafia Dynamics, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Metaphors, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Moral Ambiguity, Not A Fix-It, Not Beta Read, Not a Good Idea Chief, Other, Out of Character, Out of Character Hibari Kyouya, Out of Character Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Platonic Relationships, Power Dynamics, References to Depression, Relationship Study, Sad, Sawada Iemitsu Being an Idiot, Sawada Iemitsu's A+ Parenting, Sawada Nana Has Mist Flames, Sealed Sky Flames, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Bonding, The Author Regrets Nothing, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Threats of Violence, Unconventional Families, Unhealthy Relationships, Void Sawada Tsunayoshi, Vongola Nono Being an Idiot, Yakuza, i tried but, ig, im just covering all my bases guiyes, ish, let me know if i missed smth, of a sort, potentially, potentially for all of them, progressively, this fic escaped me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27702818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyimflamel/pseuds/heyimflamel
Summary: "What is this?" The tremor in his voice is well-hidden, but there. Iemitsu is staring at his son like he doesn't know who it is, sitting across from them. It was funny. It was as if he thought he had any business to know who Tsuna was in the first place. "What are you?"Tsunayoshi smiles, saccharine sweet and dripping oil slick ink from serrated teeth. "I am what you made me."
Relationships: Gokudera Hayato & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Hibari Kyouya & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Lambo Bovino & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Reborn & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Rokudou Mukuro & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Sasagawa Ryouhei & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Sawada Tsunayoshi & Vongola Tenth Generation, Sawada Tsunayoshi & Vongola Tenth Generation Guardians, Sawada Tsunayoshi & Yamamoto Takeshi
Comments: 22
Kudos: 372
Collections: Coda





	a rose by any other name (would taste just as bitter)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Eldritch Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23491300) by [BookQueen04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookQueen04/pseuds/BookQueen04). 



There comes a time in life where the ordinary becomes extraordinary; where the normal becomes the strange; where familiar becomes unfamiliar. Similarly, the unfamiliar can become familiar; the extraordinary becomes ordinary; the strange becomes normal. This time in one's life can be brought about by many things. Near death experiences, for one. A crisis, or revelation, can also cause this shift in one's perception.

It is a quiet day when such a revelation comes upon a young boy in a small town. Namimori, Japan, is unremarkable. It is almost remarkable in how unremarkable it really is. In it lives two-thirds of the Sawada family. Sawada Nana, the faithful wife of Sawada Iemitsu and a kind mother, and Sawada Tsunayoshi, the son. The young boy.

Sawada Iemitsu takes the role of the absent father, working abroad somewhere different every time he bothers to send a postcard or call home. The calls are few and far between. Their landline number has remained the same since before they had moved into the modest three bedroom house they live in.

Tsunayoshi could be regarded as a normal child. He laughed, and cried, and played with other children his age. He was afraid of the dark and had a comfort blanket which always stayed draped over his bed and he learned well in class. He was also a rather sensitive child but that did not stop him from exploring and adventuring.

He was warm, so warm, and he was full of hope and wonder and potential. He was full, full, full and warmth oozed from his very being. Warmth and home, belonging and bright eyes and full laughs, wide smiles and sticky chocolate-covered cheeks.

His father had visited once when he was three, almost four, years old. He had come in with his boss and his mother, his sweet, naive mother, had welcomed both in. It was as if Iemitsu had never left. They talked and talked, and ate, and talked some more. Tsuna was playing in the garden.

The brunette was startled by a dog. The old man, his father's boss, consoled him and then all Tsuna could think about was the bright orange flame on the man's finger, and then all he knew was _coldcoldcoldwhyisitsocold?_

Sawada Tsunayoshi has never been the same since.

\---=&=---

Sealing flames is a little-known, well-guarded practice among higher ups in the mafia world. It is considered barbaric at best, and is only used in the worst case scenario. The only people who can seal flames are sky flame users, of which there are few and far between. If any rules were to be given for sealing flames, it would be this; never, _ever_ , under any circumstances, seal a primary Sky flame user.

So, Reborn cannot find a single _fucking_ reason the file in front of him reads _'Sky flames **[SEALED]** '_. In all of his years working as a hitman in the mafia world, he has never seen a single person even _considering_ sealing a Sky. No one has even entertained the very concept of it. Ever. He had thought that, out of everyone in this shit world, Timoteo would be the last person to think about it.

Never mind actually committing said act.

But, there it was. Written, printed in black and white and signed in red pen in an inconspicuous Manila-coloured folder; Vongola Nono had sealed the flames of the Sky when he was just four years old. Now, after all these years, he wanted Reborn to fix his mess for him and find a way to unseal the boy's flames somehow and train him to become the next Vongola boss. Reborn had half a mind to ignore the request and continue on with his day from the sheer stupidity his old friend exuded. He had half a mind to storm into the CEDEF HQ and throttle Iemitsu Sawada for having the gall to ask for his son's flames to be sealed.

However. As a personal request from the Nono, he could not refuse. It made him grit his teeth in anger and frustration to sit across from Timoteo, who is smiling serenely as if nothing is wrong, and read the file on this civilian boy. There is no way that Timoteo could be this dumb. There is no way that even Iemitsu could be this dumb, to think that simply keeping his family in some remote no-name town would be enough to protect them from the mafia world. There is no way on this fucking Earth that Iemitsu had thought his family was safe, that people wouldn't want to get back at Vongola's Young Lion by going through his family. There is no way that they had thought sealing the young Sawada's flames was a respectable option.

There are no reports of assassination attempts or the like, but Reborn doubts that those reports are truthful. If anything, living in a small town--where the hell even is Namimori, anyway?--made them more of a target than if they lived in a big city. Still. Reborn took the job and found himself on a plane to the Kyoto district of Japan. He wondered what would be left of Sawada Tsunayoshi when he arrived, if there was even anything there for him to find at all.

\---=&=---

He spent his first week in Japan on espionage. Namimori, Japan may be a small town but if Reborn was going to live here for the next few years of his life, he may as well get familiar with the characters he's dealing with. The civilians, the not-so-civilians, and the not very secretive moles and spies and Yakuza groupies.

The first person he scopes out is Hibari Kyoya. The boy should be in his first year of high school, but instead, he has somehow remained on the Namimori middle school campus, ruling with an iron fist as the leader of the disciplinary committee. The Hibari spawn is the only reason Namimori is such a safe town, standing in for police officials who are more than happy to look the other way. Hibari Kyoya also has some latent Cloud flames which appear to be strong and well-developed, simmering just beneath the surface as if to jump out and fire up at any time. Reborn thinks about what he knows of the Hibari boy and decides that it is very in-line with what he knows him to be, and of what the locals call him. Demon of Namimori, indeed.

There is an old, familiar face in Namimori that Reborn had not expected to see. He had never met the man personally, but Yamamoto Tsuyoshi has a long career as an assassin. Or, he did before his retirement. His kill count and impressive skill with the sword aside, Tsuyoshi was a highly sought after assassin in his prime and even well past it. His son, Takeshi, seems to have stable Rain flames which Reborn keeps an eye on. Who knows what the young Yamamoto would be capable of, given the chance to show off and grow? Perhaps Tsuyoshi had passed on some assassin traits to his son which would be beneficial for this generation's Vongola famiglia.

While passing by the high school, he manages to catch a glimpse of an energetic and loud student. The size and potency of his Sun flames had Reborn reeling. To think that a mere civlian's flames would be so strong, and seemingly active, too, is almost unthinkable. The student is, as he later finds out, Sasagawa Ryohei. His younger sister, Kyoko, has Sun flames as well, though hers are nowhere near as impressive as her brother's. Both are given their own dedicated folders in his mind, setting up a nice backdrop for his future schemes and plans.

The hitman wonders what the hell is up with this town, to have three civilians with such high potential to become powerful flame users. Well, if you count Tsunayoshi, then four, but strangely, Reborn has not managed to catch even a glimpse of the Sky.

He does stumble in to Sawada Nana on her shopping trip. She is just as the reports had described her; ditzy, air-headed, but kind and sweet all the same. Her flames are semi-active, and they echo frayed and half-formed bonds which have been neglected and abandoned long ago. Reborn wonders how Iemitsu could do such a thing to his wife, and then concedes that the stupid blonde probably had no idea he had left behind an element when he ditched Namimori for the famiglia.

He didn't have any idea about anything, it seems.

Sawada Tsunayoshi is described as a clumsy, awkward teenager with abysmal grades but a good heart and kind disposition, much like his mother's. So far, Reborn hadn't seen him in the town at all. It was strange, really, because he had watched Hibari hunt down and 'bite' the assassins and contract killers assigned to exterminate the Sawada duo, and he had found Yamamoto's kid in the baseball pitch at the middle school and his father's sushi restaurant all the time. The Sasagawa siblings could be found in bakeries and confectionery stores, the local gym and the high school boxing club. Their flame signatures trailed after them like bread crumbs, mapping out their routines and paths with flames sticking to certain buildings and side walks like syrup from how often they could be found there.

There was not a single Sky flame to be felt or seen _anywhere_ in Namimori. Even the Sawada household held not a trace of the harmonious flames. Only Nana's sickly Mist flames clung to the hollowed house, infecting it almost. Reborn can see where Nana's air-headedness and near-obsessive loyalty came from. Her Mist flames, with the snapped bond to a Sky who never came back home, had likely began to form illusions which soothed her psyche and distracted her enough from the empty feeling caused by said uncompleted bond.

Reborn was not the number one hitman in the world for nothing. He scoped out the school, he tried to get inside the Sawada household itself, tried to peek through windows and even pulled all-nighters to try to catch a glimpse of the boy. He had been assigned to change him into a mafia boss worthy of the Vongola famiglia, after all. Sawada Tsunayoshi was nowhere to be found. At least, by Reborn and his attempts. Did he even exist? Did he live in Namimori? Was he even still alive?

Despite the trepidation Reborn felt at the beginning of the assignment, and still felt to be completely honest, he felt disappointed. He had already found three suitable guardians for the boy, as long as they could harmonise with one another. Hibari Kyoya as his Cloud guardian, Yamamoto Takeshi as his Rain, and Sasagawa Ryohei as the Sun. He considered pulling a favour to get one Gokudera Hayato to come to Japan and "test" Tsuna, and subsequently become his Storm guardian.

Of course, all of this planning and scheming will go to waste if he doesn't find the boy he's supposed to be tutoring. School will be starting up again on Monday. According to the report, Tsuna will be starting his second year in Namimori middle. He may have been able to avoid Reborn all this time, but it ends now.

\---=&=---

He didn't know what he expected, but it was certainly not _this_.

Tsunayoshi's flames were wrong. So, so wrong that it made him recoil and want to flee, but he was the number one hitman and he did not run from anything. No one had ever recorded the effects of sealing a Sky flame user, active or not, because it simply had never happened. Until now, he supposed. It had never happened _until now_.

Sky flames are unique and special in the way that they have the harmonisation factor. They are the flames which pull others to them and can make them feel settled and at home. They are the flames which bring together all other types of flames and ground them. They let the other flames breathe and experience and give them what they need most. Tsuna's flames are almost inverted in comparison. They are a gross perversion of Sky flames, of what his flames should be. Where they are supposed to be harmonising, they are disorganising. Where they are supposed to settle others, they aggravate and distress. Where Sky flames are supposed to feel familiar and like home, his feel alien and foreign and just-- _wrong_.

Instead of drawing people in, like a normal and healthy active Sky should, he chased them away. Instead of gathering guardians, gathering elements under his wings and adding them to his Sky, he repulsed anyone who could even be considered for the position.

Reborn didn't know what the _hell_ Tsuna was, but one thing he knew for sure. That boy was no Sky. Not anymore.

\---=&=---

Tsuna blinked slowly, looking at the worksheet in front of him. The numbers and letters bled into the page, becoming unrecognisable. He sighed and picked up his pen anyway, trying to make sense of the smears.

He was so cold. So empty.

Tsuna blinked again. His pen scratched along the worksheet monotonously, in sync with that of his classmates' pens.

Later, when he had been appropriately jeered at and degraded by his teachers and other students in his class, he sighed and closed his eyes for a few beats. What was the point of it all, really? Life was so boring and meaningless. It was so empty and cold, cold like the winters and the snow and empty like his house and his room and his heart. Why did they all bother?

 _'What is the point in going through school filling out worksheets anyway,'_ Tsuna wondered to himself, scribbling out the bleeding hiragana he wrote on the page. _'Just like they all say. I'm no-good anyway, so what is the point in me being here?'_

He spends his lunches on the rooftop. The railing is rickety and old in some places. It's windy and high up. It is also the Demon of Namimori's territory, not that Tsuna cared much about many things these days, least of all the trigger-happy enforcer. He sits up there no matter the weather and lets himself exist for a while. Existing is boring, he decided early on, but it's all he really has to do, so he'll have to deal with it.

 _'So empty...'_ he sighed, putting his hand over his stomach. Tsuna remembers being a child and trying to fill the emptiness with food and drinks and snacks, all of the ones he could find. They tasted like sawdust in his mouth and oil slick down his throat. They did not fill the emptiness. If anything, it made it worse. How naive he was back then, to think he could fill the emptiness with such things. How naive he had been, believing he could chase away the cold with hot tea and soup and food, with layers of blankets and smouldering splints crackling on his palms.

_((Crackling, smouldering amber like the flame of that man, before the emptiness and the cold and when he was still warm, so warm, so full of life and joy and so full of wonder.))_

~~_((He never wondered again.))_ ~~

Hibari sometimes comes up to the roof to sleep. It's only on the slow days, though, when Namimori is quiet and peaceful and the sun is shining, when there are clouds to watch and all is calm and orderly. Namimori is rarely anything else, these days. Tsuna ponders whether that is because of Hibari, or if it's because people look the other way. He stops pondering. Pondering is for people who have things to think about and things to say and things to learn and grow from, and Tsuna never really had either. Tsuna never really bothered enough to have either.

On the worse nights, because there is never a good night but some are worse than others, he thinks about what he is and why he is empty and _why him, why not them?_ He thinks about orange flames and the Sky. He decides he is neither of those things, not like _that man_ and decides that he is the dark and the empty and the cold.

He thinks about being a Night Sky and decides that is too good, too full for him to be. He thinks about the Void and its omnipresent emptiness, its blackness and its dark and dark and cold and unforgiving, and thinks he might be Void the same way _that man_ was Sky. He thinks about space. The stars, the sun, the planets and their moons and the galaxies spinning out there somewhere. He thinks that space is big, and it is so big that all of the space between each part of it must be Void. Tsuna thinks he can live with that. Not the Night Sky. Not space, entirely, but the Void between elements of space. Empty and cold and yearning for something he can't name.

Tsuna sighed, stood up, and headed to class.

\---=&=---

Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Reborn curses his past self for taking on this assignment. Just being near Tsuna makes him shudder, the flames wrong and inverted, discordant. Being near Nana and her frayed edges, the self-serving delusions in her illusion-addled mind makes his head spin. It makes him want to go back to Italy for the express purpose of kicking Iemitsu's ass, scalping him, and making Christmas decorations out of his teeth.

Alas, he cannot do that. Nono is paying him to do a job, and having an important Mafioso such as the ninth Vongola boss owe you a favour is too delicious to pass up. Reborn will have to suck it up and deal with it, and whip this kid into shape ready for Nono's retirement in a few years.

If he has to break this kid down to bare foundations and build him back up in Vongola's rose-coloured, blood-stained image, then so be it.

"Ciaossu, my name is Reborn, your new home tutor."

Tsuna blinked slowly at him, not unlike Leon, before turning to his mother. "Mom, what's for dinner?"

"It's your favourite, Tsu-kun! Go on upstairs and show Reborn around while you wait for dinner, okay?" she replied, her voice peppy and bright as always.

Tsuna shrugged, pulling his bag up higher on his shoulder and turning to walk up the stairs. With a barely concealed annoyance, Reborn kicked him in the back of the head, sending him sprawling down the first floor corridor.

"Ow! What was that for?" the brunette exclaimed, rubbing the back of his head.

"That was for ignoring me, No-Good Tsuna. You see, I am not just a regular home tutor. I am actually the number one hitman, and I am here to make you into a mafia boss," Reborn explained, tilting his fedora up.

The brunette blinked at him. "Yeah, in the toddler leagues, maybe."

_Thwack._

\---=&=---

Training Dino Cavallone to become a mafia boss was a chore of the highest order. Getting that idiot to get to the end was like trying to make a cowardly dog climb Mount Everest. He did it, of course. Reborn does not fail, and he always comes out on top. Oh, but it is such a fight to get Tsuna to simply _do_. He fights and he protests every step of the way, insisting that he will not become a mafia boss every other minute. He is lazy, unmotivated, he lacks the resolve and drive to do the most basic things, and his clumsiness is almost as severe as Dino's.

Reborn had been reluctant to use the dying will bullet on him since he had first made contact with the kid. It wasn't because he didn't think the kid was ready--though you could say it was a part of it and not be entirely wrong, but not entirely right either. It wasn't because of any outside factors, like Nana always hovering or a direct order from Nono.

No. It was because Reborn wasn't sure if Tsuna would get back up afterwards.

Dying will bullets were meant to draw out a person's dying will flames and help to make them become active. Or, in this case, Nono and Iemitsu were hoping that the dying will bullets were going to help break the seal that had been put on Tsuna's flames. The reason Reborn is reluctant is in the name; dying _will_ flames. He wasn't sure whether Tsuna had any sort of will at all, even in death. Reborn had thought about it for a while. Surely, he would regret leaving his mother? Surely, he would have some regrets or reasons to live and not die?

Reborn had asked Tsuna what motivated him once. The boy wasn't doing his homework, and hadn't even looked at the papers since they had been assigned.

"I am not motivated in anything. What is there to be motivated by? Everything in life is so dull and tasteless. There is nothing to be interested in. There is no reason to stick around much. There is only this emptiness and this lack of warmth," Tsuna had answered.

That worried Reborn. By sealing Tsuna's flames, had Nono also sealed away his will to live? His resolve? Had the sealing really impacted Tsuna that badly as a Sky? Reborn had already decided that his clumsiness was due to the lack of harmony from his sealed flames, and the same with the 'lack of warmth'. The emptiness, though? The lack of motivation, the lack of interest, the dull and bland outlook on life? Had that been caused by the sealing of his flames as well? Did this have something to do with how wrong his Sky flames felt now?

Reborn recalled his first impressions of the Sawada house. Hollowed, empty, with Nana's sickly Mist clinging to the foundations like a lifeline. He has a feeling that the reason their household felt hollow and empty was because of Tsuna's warped flames. It's the same feeling that tells him that Nana's emptiness doesn't come from only her half-formed element bond to Iemitsu. Reborn's instincts had never been wrong.

Naturally, Reborn had written to Nono about his concerns. The days spent tutoring (or, attempting to tutor) Tsuna and trying to intimidate him in to running laps and training were tense as he awaited Nono's response. All that waiting was fruitless when the current Vongola boss waved off his concerns and told him to continue pushing and training Tsuna. Also, as a footnote, Nono told him to hurry with the dying will training to unseal the boy's Sky flames quickly.

Reborn wanted to scream. At Nono and his stupid mafia, at Iemitsu for wanting to seal his only son's flames and then fucking off for ten years, at Nana for being oblivious to her son's obvious downward spiral and doing nothing to help, hell, at _Namimori_ as a whole _entity_ for seeing the change in Tsuna and doing nothing about it. Inexplicably, he wants to scream at Tsuyoshi, who should have known that Tsuna was Iemitsu's son and who should have noticed the change in the young boy and _who did absolutely nothing_. He wants to scream at Hibari, who is the protector of Namimori now but was barely older than Tsuna when his flames were sealed.

The trees around Namimori have deep bullet holes and scorch marks littering them for days afterwards, oozing powerful Sun flames all the while.

\---=&=---

Ten days later, Reborn shoots his first dying will bullet in to Tsuna's skull. It takes the brunette fifteen minutes to stand up. Fifteen long, agonising minutes where Reborn had internally panicked because _'fuck, I killed the only viable Vongola heir who isn't dead or frozen somewhere in the mansion'_ and _'hiding from the Vongola will be hard, but nowhere near as impossible as bringing Tsuna back to life.'_

But Tsuna does, eventually, stand up. When he does, the flame on his forehead is black and brown and midnight blue with the tiniest sliver of orange that shows up rarely but it shows up all the same.

Reborn doesn't shoot him again for a long, long time.

\---=&=---

Yamamoto Takeshi is a Rain. A dormant Rain, but a Rain all the same. He's all fake laughs and plastic smiles, and the strength of his swing with a bat is formidable. Reborn wonders if Tsuyoshi ever considered teaching his son the way of the sword, because if he did, Reborn had no doubt that Takeshi would surpass his father and his ancestors, perhaps even surpassing the first generation Rain guardian himself.

Still, before Yamamoto Takeshi, baseball star can become Yamamoto Takeshi, tenth generation Rain guardian, certain things need to fall in to place. Reborn looks at the boy one last time before he shelves his schemes and ideas away for later. He has a call to make.

\---=&=---

For all of his attitude and posturing, Gokudera Hayato is an excellent Mafioso. He may not be subtle enough to be a spy or assassin, and he may be too hot-headed and impatient to be used as anything other than a full-frontal force or a distraction, he is still young. Unpolished. If there is one thing Reborn is good at, it's polishing potential and refining it into a fine blade to be used. Hayato is mainly a good Mafioso because he is currently unaligned, and that means that the opportunity is there to win his puppy-dog loyalty.

Reborn plays with words like a child playing with crayons. He creates stories layered with half-truths and truths and believable lies to coax Hayato into a trap of his design. It's pathetically easy to get the silver-haired boy to come to Japan and challenge Tsuna. Hayato is desperate for guidance and approval, licking up any scraps he's given regardless of where they came from or what they are. In this case, it's killing Tsuna which he believes will get him the praise he wants.

It's incredibly less easy to get Tsuna to take the challenge seriously, or even to consider showing up at all. There's threats, there's whining, an argument breaks out and Reborn considers shooting him with a real bullet for a long second, but the desire fizzles out swiftly. Hibari Kyoya is used as a threat (unsuccessfully) and it takes a long time for Tsuna to entertain the idea. In the end, Tsuna does show up to the back of the school where Hayato has been waiting, clutching a dynamite stick in each hand. Tsuna almost turns and leaves, but he trips over a rock which sends him flying.

A battle that's not really a battle happens. It's messy. There's cracks on the floor, scorch marks cover it in starburst patterns and a stray dynamite almost hit Reborn in the head. Tsuna's clumsiness comes in surprisingly handy as it helps him evade some of the attacks. About halfway through, Reborn is forced to shoot Tsuna with a dying will bullet so that he can evade the dynamite sticks thrown at him. The black-brown-midnight-blue flames make an ugly reappearance. The battle continues.

Hayato slips up. Tsuna saves him. In another world, another universe, Hayato pledges his loyalty and Tsuna denies it vehemently, choosing to befriend the boy who then became his Storm. However, this isn't another world and Tsuna is not a Sky. Hayato asks to be a part of the discourse in Tsuna's flames, the flickering lights (darks?) imprinted in his memory.

"You want to become a part of my Void?" Tsuna asked, surprised.

 _'Void'_ , Reborn mouths to himself, near-hysterical. _'Void.'_

A silver-haired teenager with nowhere to go, a Storm with no Sky to follow, a Mafioso with no boss to serve under. A brunette who is empty and cold, a sealed Sky corrupted into Void, a boss-to-be with no underlings to lead. They meet in the middle, somewhere, in a grey area that has been unexplored. The Storm becomes something different, something wrong and twisted. A perverted version of the Storm, corrupted by Tsuna's Void the same way the Sky was corrupted by the sealing.

Where the Storm is unyielding and ferocious, Hayato becomes bright and dying. Where he is supposed to be resilient, he becomes exposed. Where he is supposed to be wild and free, he becomes practised and contained. The whirl winding Storm, so strong and unpredictable, becomes a dying star; a supernova bursting at the seams, exploding and exploding and dying and luminous.

Reborn watches, after, and a chill runs down his spine. They're wearing matching smiles--two corrupt elements, inverse and upside down and inside out. He wishes he could lock Tsuna away, stop him from doing this to another five, stop this insanity and this madness, nip it at the bud. He hates himself for not trying.

\---=&=---

It's deeply unhealthy. Tsuna is empty and cold and he only knows how to keep others away. His flames only know how to repel, not how to comfort or settle or how to make a house a home. His Void, this dark matter between celestial bodies, only knows how to cushion the fall and how to keep things in place. They only know how to reach out for some twisted version of harmony, some feeble attempt at bringing elements together to its bleak and empty canvas.

So, it does. It reaches out to Hayato's Storm. The Storm is so unruly, so deeply rooted in to discord and destruction; so right and perfect and correct. Yet, it is so _off_ for Tsuna. It is right for a Sky, but for his Void, it is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. So, the sealed flames twist and turn, burrowing their way into the Storm. They destroy. They compress and compress and compress the Storm into a tiny thing, pressure it into a new shape, a new property. They tear down the destruction and the anger, squash the rubble into a tiny ball.

The ball explodes. Storm twists in to Supernova. It is powerful, it is eye-watering in its brightness, and it is dying. In its death, the Storm becomes something beautiful. Something dying, forever, on an endless loop for the Void it wishes to call home. The Storm destroys; the Supernova creates. The Storm makes death and only knows how to disintegrate and harm; the Supernova creates life and only knows how to integrate and do good.

Tsuna smiles, his emptiness becomes a little less empty, and he feels a space carve itself for his Supernova. He offers a hand. Hayato smiles back and he takes it, and takes it, and falls apart just to make something new and whole and _real_.

\---=&=---

There is emptiness, and then there is emptiness with company. There is Void, and then there is space. Void is empty, and cold, and empty. Tsuna is still Void; he will always be Void. This is a universal fact. It is something which will never change in this timeline, in this world. However, there is space in the Void for things. Things which can be collected, like the Supernova which Reborn had brought to him on a silver platter to infect with his disease, to selfishly warp into something which can fit into his Void. The Storm fits with the Sky; the Supernova fits with the Void.

He has had a taste of emptiness with company. Tsuna wants more, and more, and more, and so much more until he is filled with things to keep his emptiness company.

\---=&=---

Reborn asks to have more time. He all-but begs the Nono for more time. There is something about Yamamoto Takeshi that makes Reborn hesitate. Not for his own morals or his own reservations, but for the new Vongola that Nono and Iemitsu are trying to create. He had introduced a beautiful, perfect Storm to Tsuna, one which could be shaped and moulded into a powerhouse given the time. Tsuna's flames distorted Hayato's flames, made them like his, and made Hayato become someone new and unfamiliar. He is worried that introducing Takeshi's Rain to Tsuna will garner the same result. He is worried that introducing Ryohei's Sun to Tsuna will garner the same result.

Reborn is worried that Tsuna's flames will make the unmatchable, matchable, but not in the way the Vongola or Nono or Iemitsu want. Instead of Tsuna returning to Sky flames to match the elements, the elements will disfigure to match with Tsuna's Void.

He is rarely shaken by anything. His career as a hitman is long, and starts early in his life when he was just a boy. He has seen the seedy underbelly of society more than he has experienced the virtues of life. He has lived and breathed the mafia for as long as he can remember. He became cursed by a man they call Checkerface, bestowed the title of Arcobaleno with seven others to keep a balance among flame users. He is the world's strongest Sun flame user, the number one hitman, Reborn. Tsuna's flames, Tsuna's future _guardians_ and their _elements_ shake him.

This is not usual. This is not right. He revels in chaos and kills with abandon. He wants to complete this job to the best of his ability, but he is unsure whether the Vongola will allow him to. He sends another report to Nono, explaining his findings while revealing little at the same time. He hopes he can finish this mission. He is intrigued by Tsuna and his flames. As much as they make him sick, as much as they make him feel uneasy and tense, they are Chaos and they are Discord. The inversion of Sky and harmony is Void and discord and Reborn wishes to see this to the very end, to see discord be crowned a leader and see what follows. He had followed a Sky, once--harmonious and warm and comforting, like a Sky should be. She died and left the rest of them for dead. She died and left a young daughter behind to become the next Sky Arcobaleno. Reborn does not want to follow another Sky, does not wish to make a home out of a house and tear it down once they leave.

Nono gives him the go ahead. Reborn bears his teeth and looks toward his next target, his next kill. He thinks about what Rain might become, what it might bend itself into for the Void that is Tsuna. He would rather it be a surprise.

\---=&=---

Yamamoto Takeshi is vulnerable. He is walking along a razor's edge day-to-day, a normal that should not be normal for a budding baseball star. He has his father, and the restaurant they own. He has good friends--are they his friends?--and he's popular and well-liked by his peers. His grades might be average, sometimes not what they should be, but they're better than some. He's athletic and kind, he might not believe the laughs and smiles he gives but they're there for others to look at and take. At least he isn't No-Good Tsuna, is the point. At least he's got something going for him.

Until he doesn't.

Takeshi felt he had come at a crossroads with baseball. It didn't have the same zing that it did before. He began to feel unmotivated, frustrated at his lack of improvement and growth in his favourite sport. He had asked his teammates for help and they told him to try harder, so he did. He breaks his arm, just weeks away from an important game for the school. Takeshi's teammates start whining, complaining about their star batter not being able to play. They say that they will lose without him.

It makes him think about what he had done to make the baseball gods so mad at him. Why him, of all people? Why was he the one who has to suffer? Why must everything he loves be taken from him like this? His decision seems like an obvious, natural progression. He walks up to the roof during lunch, ignoring everyone who tries to talk to him on his way up. There is a warning about the Demon of Namimori lurking up there. _'I don't care,'_ he thinks, _'Without baseball, I am nothing anyway.'_

There are already people on the roof, but not the ones he expects. He had expected Hibari. He had expected Hibari's right-hand, Kusakabe. He had not expected No-Good Tsuna or the new transfer kid to be up on the roof. _'It is just my luck... to show this weakness in front of the school's punching bag and the new kid, huh?'_

The roof feels empty. Logically, he knows that the roof is not empty. No-Good Tsuna and Gokudera are up here, and so is he. However. There is something so empty, hollowed out and cold, being up here on the rooftop. Takeshi doesn't know what it is or where it's coming from. There is no wind or breeze. The sun is shining, in fact. It is warm but not terribly so, but up here everything is cold like winter and autumn even though it is spring time.

In another life, Yamamoto Takeshi tries to jump off the school roof. In another life, Sawada Tsunayoshi talks him down and tries to get him off the ledge. They both fall. A gun shot rings out. They are both saved. This is not another life, and Sawada Tsunayoshi is no Sky. In this life, Gokudera smiles, understanding, and pats the place next to him on the roof. No-Good Tsuna lazily opens an eye and sighs. He also pats the place next to Gokudera. He goes back to napping, head cushioned on the other boy's lap. Takeshi watches, breathes, blinks, and takes the offer.

Later, much later, Takeshi went home with his arm in a sling and no smile on his face. He asks his father about taking up the sword. Tsuyoshi feels the change in his son, the emptiness and the cold and the weird, sticky hollowness that clings to his boy, but agrees anyway. It's the first time in months that Takeshi had stopped pretending.

\---=&=---

Watching the elements change is fascinating, Reborn thinks. He thinks of a colleague, a cursed one just like him, who would love to watch this corruption firsthand. One who would love to see if it extends to people other than the chosen guardians. Verde would love to see if Tsuna's Void corrupts everything and anything in its path, friend or foe. Verde would love to see the effect it would have on an Arcobaleno.

Verde is not here, and Reborn has not contacted him since they disbanded. Verde is a slimy little shit that Reborn loathes with every fibre of his being because the man annoys him so much it is unbelievable.

Takeshi's Rain is soft and vulnerable and calming, as all Rain flames are. They are tranquil. They are blue and water and dulling. This Rain shifts and evolves into something _more_. Void weasels its way inside, picking apart and making the soft Rain hard with its cold and empty. All Void knows how to do is change its elements to fit the blank spaces. Where it should be soft and vulnerable, it becomes hard and insensitive. Where it should be calm and peaceful, it turns to a state of unrest and chaos. Where it should be Rain, it is Ice. Ice cold, sharp as the blade Takeshi swings in place of a baseball bat.

The Void had taken all of the soft and meek and sad, crushed it in its space and formed something misshapen out of the hardened crystals left behind. The undeveloped was forced to mature. Shards tempered in the Void, filling emptiness with new company alongside _beautifulbrightdying_ Supernova. Where Takeshi used to be Rain, he is now Interstellar Ice.

Tsuna and Hayato smile. Takeshi smiles back and tilts his head to watch the clouds. This is not home, but this is the closest he's ever gotten to feeling like he belongs.

\---=&=---

Everything is so empty. So cold.

There is empty and there is space and there is cold. Now, there is also bright and dying and life and rebirth Supernova in this space. There is also hard and insensitive and turmoil and floating Ice alongside it in the space between empty caverns. It is still cold and it is still empty, but it is less empty. Not enough to feel full, but less. Tsuna wants more. He wants more space filled, more elements to decorate this Void inside, more and more and _more_ until there is no more he can take.

Hayato and Takeshi are good. They fill the space and they talk and talk and make life seem a bit less lonely and empty. He thanks Reborn for giving him such good things to fill the space. To fill the empty and the Void. However, there is still so much cold and empty to fill. So much lack of warmth and lack of fullness in him. He's had another taste of maybe-full and he wants to take more than the world can give to feel fully-full.

Tsuna does not ponder. He wakes up and stays with his Supernova and his Ice, who makes this world feel less empty, and he waits for the next thing to come along and take. Reborn is very good at giving him things he can take for himself.

\---=&=---

There is not an exact, pinpointed time where something in Tsunayoshi changes. It is, instead, something which is simultaneously inevitable and startling in how it changes the boy. That is not to say that the change was unwelcome, but it is something unexpected that feels like a natural progression.

Where there was apathy and disconnect, there is now something dark and feral lurking beneath the surface. Here are two truths: Tsunayoshi is still Void, and Tsunayoshi is still lacking in resolve. Here are two more truths: Tsunayoshi is changed, and Tsunayoshi is an abomination. Perhaps it is misleading to say that Tsunayoshi is changed only now. He always has been an abomination, though maybe not as overtly eldritch and savage as he has become.

A Sky keeps its elements grounded, and the elements keep its Sky grounded in turn. It is a mutually beneficial relationship for all parties involved. On the other hand, a Void allows its elements to push the boundaries of natural and supernatural and of right and wrong, and the elements allow its Void to evolve into something calamitous and vicious.

The apathy lingered, mostly. Its filled in the cracks and grooves, binding itself to Tsuna's core as good as any filler out there. Working alongside that apathy was something cruel, and cold, and hideous. It's nothing that Namimori had not seen before, just not from the meek little No-Good they swept to the side.

It is always the quiet ones, though, isn't it?

\---=&=---

Ryohei is an active Sun. He is bold and bright and full of such life. He gives and gives and gives until he can't give any more. He heals wounds and uses his strength to fight those who think it's okay to pick on those less-fortunate or weaker. Ryohei is happy. Ryohei is tired of giving and getting nothing back.

There is a life out there where he becomes the older brother that Tsuna needs. He becomes a healer and a protector, someone who can work alongside the Cloud and fight on par with him as a team. There is a life out there where he is rowdy and happy and lives life to the fullest everyday, even if he is a Mafioso and a Sun guardian. In this life, he is tired and there are days where giving up is more appealing than getting up. In this life, he is the one who comes to Tsuna and asks to become a part of the Void.

"Really?" Tsuna says, surprised, as if his Void had not collected a Supernova and an Ice, as if there is not another looking at him like how Ryohei is now.

"You won't regret it," the Supernova promises. The Ice watches from behind, to the left of its Void, eyes as sharp as the blade he wields.

"I know," Ryohei says, even though what he wants to say is _'please, God, please give me a space I don't want to be like this please.'_

Tsuna smiles like he is bearing teeth, all serrated edges and blood like black ink dripping from his teeth. There is something hollow and empty and cold about it all, but Ryohei can only smile back. He doesn't care. He can't bring himself to care, not when his Sun mingles with Void and Supernova and Ice all at once. He can feel his bright yellow sunshine being engulfed by this dark, empty Void and he lets it. He can feel his Sun morph and disfigure and collapse in on itself and he _lets it._

Where he is supposed to be bright and hot, he sucks all of the light and warmth out. Where he is supposed to be energetic, he is lethargic. Where he is supposed to be giving and giving and giving, instead he takes and takes and takes even when there is nothing left to take. Where he is supposed to be active and made to heal, he becomes something idle and made to eat and hunger. Ryohei takes a deep breath in, slotting in to place in the Void next to Ice and Supernova, and breathing comes easy for the first time in a long time.

There is something twisted and wrong about this. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. He clenches and unclenches his fists, different but the same. Wrongness makes way for warped belonging, for something that makes his heart and head sing at filling space. He grins, feral and open, and he sees matching grins staring right back.

\---=&=---

The thing about Tsuna is that he was not always this way. Once, he was a Sky. An open, freeing, beautiful Sky capable of becoming something great. He was a blank canvas to be painted on by his future elements, future guardians. What his father and _that man_ did is they ripped his canvas apart and drowned it in nothingness. They drowned it in the only nothingness that humans knew, black and dark and matte, and left it to dry and settle for years. They let the black seep into the canvas. They let it curl over the nasty rips and tears they made. They let the black sit and wait and expand like a festering wound.

There is no place for Storm on a canvas that is no longer white or blue. There is no place for Rain on this destroyed scene. There is no place for Sun, or Lightning, or Cloud or Mist. The canvas only knows that Void and Void is space, space is empty and so Void is empty with it.

Void has no natural elements. So, naturally, Void made its own elements. Oh, and such nice little elements they made, too. He has three now. Three to call his, to make the space in his Void less empty. His Void cloaked the Sun, rid it of its light, drank in its warmth and _squeezed_. He squeezed and squeezed and took away all of the heat the Sun could give, trying to get rid of his lack of warmth. Ryohei, the Sun, bent so perfectly under the hollow and the empty and the cold.

The Sun was squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until it couldn't be squeezed anymore. A dying star, he collapsed, and replacing the heat and activity was hunger. Hunger for light, heat, for debris and rubble. Hunger for the flames of others. Hunger for dying will flames that Were Not Part of Void. Sun crumpled and became a Black Hole. Sun was shattered and built up anew to fit into a space in the Void.

A Black Hole slotted into place alongside Supernova and Ice, basking in the emptiness. Tsuna's smile turned sinister as he thought of the possibilities, now. He held his elements close and wondered who else might come along. He wondered who else he might infect with his Void.

His eye strays to Reborn.

\---=&=---

A new Storm enters Namimori soon after. She is bull-headed and callous. She is a hitwoman worthy of her title and standing in the mafia world. She comes to Namimori in search of her love, Reborn, and in search of her stray brother, Hayato. 'Poison Scorpion' Bianchi is a pink-haired bombshell on a mission, wearing big black-rimmed glasses and riding her motorcycle around the streets of Namimori, in search of the supposed Vongola heir that her love is tutoring.

She spends at least three hours circling the town before giving up. There's not a hint of Sky flames anywhere. Come to think of it, the only flames she felt were Yamamoto Tsuyoshi's and Reborn's powerful Sun flames. The mother of the Vongola heir, Sawada Nana, had sickly flames that Bianchi tried to avoid. She wouldn't be able to avoid them forever, she knew, but it didn't hurt to try.

A few days later, she began to feel worried. She couldn't sense her brother's Storm flames anywhere in Namimori. Strangely, she could feel something more and less clinging to certain paths and buildings. Something weird. Something alien.

She had to find Reborn.

\---=&=---

The first time someone had called him No-Good Tsuna after collecting his pretty elements, it did not end well for them. It was after class when people began to leave for lunch. Tsuna, Takeshi and Hayato were on their way to the rooftop. One of the older kids, Mochida Kensuke, bumped into them. He called Tsuna 'No-Good' and laughed with his friends.

Mochida left with a broken clavicle, a cut down his arm and a bruised eye. Some people say that Mochida has felt off ever since. Something had changed in him, they whispered. Something is wrong. Mochida cost the school a kendo competition, his grades plummeted and he couldn't even look in Tsuna's direction without fleeing. He quit the kendo club soon after. His popularity suffered.

Reborn looked into the event. He felt the discourse in Mochida's flames; not quite Rain, not quite Ice. Reborn grinned and sent off another report.

Hayato and Takeshi felt no remorse for their actions. They certainly didn't feel guilty about giving Tsuna something to fill his Void. It was what he asked of them. After it was all done, Tsuna smiled and praised them. His smile was serrated, sharp and full of black, black ink. They had never felt more proud.

\---=&=---

The Sawada household was hollow. It felt like a big illusion. The sickness seeped through the wooden framework, dripping down the walls and ceilings. There was something malformed and repulsive sticking to the house as if to keep it captive. Bianchi didn't know how Reborn could stand it, but he wasn't the number one hitman for nothing. She sighed dreamily. _Reborn_. Her one true love; the reason she came to this no-name town.

Sawada's wife was an airhead. She was completely and utterly oblivious to everything going on around her, accepting everything thrown her way. The little Vongola heir, though? Now he was strange. It was as if he was an eldritch being, something not of this world. Something not human. Bianchi swallowed. _This_ was the next Vongola boss?

She averted her eyes, looking toward Reborn instead.

"Bianchi," he greeted her, taking a sip of his espresso. Tsuna blinked blearily at her.

"Reborn, my love," she greeted in turn, falling down to her knees to kiss his chubby cheek.

"Reborn, who is this?" Tsuna asked from across the table.

The room felt empty, suddenly. The heating was on in the house, but the kitchen was so cold. So, so cold. She cuddled up close to Reborn and his warm Sun flames.

"This is Poison Scorpion Bianchi. She is also my fourth lover."

"Ah... Reborn, is she a paedophile?"

_Thwack._

"Don't say such stupid things, No-Good Tsuna."

Bianchi spent the next week watching Tsuna. She saw his weird flames and saw his interactions with three other boys with weird flames. Surprisingly, one of the boys was her brother. She watched them for the full week. Every time, without fail, that someone had called Tsuna 'No-Good', or bullied him, that person changed. She could feel it in their dormant flames.

Something is very, _very_ wrong with this town. Something is very wrong with this boy.

She continued to watch Tsuna interact with his friends... Or were they his elements? She couldn't tell. Tsuna was something supernatural. His flames were an abomination, and that thing that warped his flames had spread to his friends. It had spread to her brother. It made them different, stilted. It changed them to fit in to his... _thing_. It changed them to match his wicked flames.

All she could do was watch the path of destruction they brought about. All she could do was look on to see them bulldoze through competition, through people they perceived as enemies. She had seen a lot of things in the mafia, but never anything quite like this. What did the Vongola do, to have their only viable heir be this?

\---=&=---

Hayato was aimless, but under the firm, guiding hand of his ~~_(Sky)_~~ Void, he is _~~(wrong)~~_ whole and new. He is ~~_(dead)_~~ dying and ~~_(dreadful)_~~ beautiful and reborn. He is thrilled to be ~~_(trapped)_~~ free with his Void, free to be who he is with no limitations in place. To be in this place, where it is only them ~~_(noharmonynobalancenevertobondwithanother)_~~ and their Void ~~_(mineheisMINE)_~~ is where he is most comfortable. This is a life he doesn't mind living ~~_(dying)_~~ in.

\---=&=---

Kyoya hated a lot of things. He hated crowding, for one. He hated it when people broke the rules. He hated slackers, and weaklings. He hated herbivores with a passion. He hated lowlife scum like the Yakuza and gang groupies coming into his territory, thinking they were hot shit. Above all, he hated competition. Sawada Tsunayoshi and his little circle of herbivores was an unwelcome change that made Kyoya bristle. They had effectively stunted many bullies over the past few weeks, and that was Kyoya's territory. He did not like people trespassing on his territory.

Though he could admit that the way they had taken care of the bullies was effective and ruthless, he didn't like it. They did something that Kyoya could not begin to try and replicate. It interested him. They interested him. Sawada was the worst type of herbivore, in his book. He was the type of herbivore that never even attempted to fight back against other weak herbivores. He gave up before anything had the chance to start. He didn't put up a good fight.

So. What changed? Was it surrounding himself with those herbivores that motivated him to fight back, finally? Was it something to do with that baby carnivore that followed him around? What was it?

Kyoya confronted the group. One of the herbivores wasn't present this time around, the noisy animal. Well, he is less noisy now that he had joined Tsunayoshi. The two other herbivores bracketed Tsunayoshi. The baseball herbivore to his left and the other herbivore to his right.

"You," Kyoya stated, pointing his tonfa at Tsunayoshi, "I will bite you to death."

Tsunayoshi smiled a saccharine, ink-stained smile. The glint of a sword caught his eye, and a spark was lit beside him. Tsunayoshi extended a hand and said, "Won't you let me give you what you need?"

\---=&=---

There is Void pouring out of his skin, oil slick and black like the night sky. There is a hollowness behind his eyes and an emptiness in his words that attracts him. It's one thing to become enraptured and another to allow yourself to disfigure. Kyoya is stubborn and tempted in equal measure, and that is his downfall.

It slips through the cracks, smothering his Cloud enough to beat it into shape. There is pressure on his body, at his arteries, in his lungs and attacking his Cloud. It hits, and hits, and beats, and attacks, and hits again. Pressure constricts his lungs; it makes his head burst with pain and fills his mouth with cotton. The Cloud condenses. It contorts into a new shape, a new thing worthy of space in the Void in a way that Cloud was not.

Propagation becomes neutralisation. Soft, wispy, intangible becomes tangible, hard, dense. Clouds which cross the Sky, aloof, become heavy asteroids and comets, clusters of rock that pass through the Void. What was fluid is now rigid, that which was free becomes controlled. The smothering becomes the smothered; the changing and renewing becomes stable and unyielding. Strength increases. Ferocity increases. Speed increases.

And, like a comet, Hibari Kyoya falls before he can fly, leaving a streak of brilliant light trailing behind him.

He accepts the hand and feels strangely liberated.

\---=&=---

Reborn watches Tsuna grab onto his guardians and corrupt them with an odd, morbid pleasure. Verde must have rubbed off on him at some point, because observing the changes in their flames is fascinating and horrific in equal measure. Tsuna has gathered a Storm, a Rain, a Sun and a Cloud on his (mostly) lonesome, distorting them to fit his Void perfectly.

He thinks about Iemitsu and Nono, and thinks _'good riddance'_ because this is the monster they had created and crowned as the Tenth boss. There is poetic irony in there somewhere, about how the worries of a father had unintentionally forged a monster, and about how their well-meaning protection had destroyed the one they were looking to protect. Reborn was never really good at poetry, anyway.

Bianchi arriving at Namimori was a miscalculation on Reborn's part. He hadn't expected her to play chase but either way it changes nothing. Reborn had orders to fulfil, and fulfil them, he will. Even if it ends up harming a few dozen civilians, well. No one accused the mafia of being neat and tidy, least of all the Vongola. If anything, Nono should be thrilled that Tsuna and his little gaggle of guardians are performing so well. They certainly won't have any reservations about the dirty side of dealings.

It takes Bianchi maybe three weeks to crack. Reborn knows that she watched the slowly forming Tenth generation. She was a hitwoman, after all. There was nothing to do but to witness the delicious chaos his pupil was creating in this no-name town.

"That is not my brother," Bianchi remarks, her face turned green as if she ate one of her poisoned dishes. The Arcobaleno almost pities her, for thinking that her brother could associate with the Vongola and come out unscathed.

"You need to crack a few eggs to make an omelette," Reborn responds dismissively.

Bianchi looks at him in dawning horror, new eyes with no rose-coloured glass to hide Reborn's true nature away from her any longer. A pity. She is a formidable ally to have, especially for the Vongola. Oh well. Some are made for this life, and others crack under the pressure. Bianchi is a great hitwoman, but evidently, she is not great enough to be called 'Vongola'. She left Japan the next morning on an emergency flight.

Her loss. Reborn continues plotting and scheming. He thinks about who to nudge in Tsuna's direction next. The only two left are Lightning and Mist, but he has a feeling that Tsuna won't stop there. The Void is endless and empty. There is plenty of space left to fill and Tsuna's guardians are more than willing to deliver.

\---=&=---

Bovino Lambo is ridiculously easy to corrupt. One grape-flavoured treat makes him putty in Tsuna's hands, and Lightning breaks down, stripped of its energy, expands and rebuilds into a Moon, lethargic and flexible and powerful enough to control the tide on the Earth. Hardening is a thing of the past. Instead of green shocks and electricity, there is a Moon large enough to be a planet circling stars and dust.

\---=&=---

The warped guardians are efficient and deadly. Much deadlier than Reborn could have made them in those short months since he arrived. It is Tsuna's diseased flames which caused the instantaneous, sudden change in them. It is the ache for approval from their Void which gives them resolve.

With each person they break, half-normal and half-abnormal, there is less emptiness though the cold remains. With each person they break, Ryohei can feast, Kyoya can fight to his heart's content, and the others can show off what they learned. With each person they offer to Tsuna, they get a saccharine ink-stained smile that makes their bonds sing and preen. They search for that approval time and time again. They bring him offerings in the form of souls and flames for the slightest taste of victory on their tongues.

The Void is dependent on them; the feeling of it has them love-drunk. It's obsessive, possessive, unhealthy in the best and worst ways, but it's some twisted type of love all the same. All that matters is that it's _theirs_ , and no one ever said that they had to be good. The thing with being depended on so strongly is that the Void, Tsuna, is equally as obsessive and possessive as they are. He keeps them close, trying to fill the space and the empty by dragging his elements to crowd around him.

Even Kyoya allows this to happen, allows for himself to be tugged down to put his head in Tsuna's lap and doze, allows for himself to be touched and embraced by his Void. Cloud Kyoya would not have allowed this to happen for at least another decade. Asteroid, Comet, Remains Kyoya indulges greedily. More recently, Tsuna had begun including Reborn in this ritual. Either the kid was planning something or he really just didn't care about Reborn's active hitman status.

"What are you doing, No-Good Tsuna?" Reborn questioned, though his tone was commanding.

"You're warm," Tsuna answered as if it was the obvious conclusion, resting his chin on top of Reborn's fedora-covered head. Reborn pursed his lips.

"What are you _doing_?"

"So cold..." Tsuna breathed out, barely above a whisper. "So, so cold..."

Reborn didn't point out that the heating was on, always, in the Sawada household. He didn't point out that Tsuna had already wrapped all six blankets in his room around himself, as well as two throws from the living room. He also didn't point out that he had five twisted elements at his beck and call, willing to provide their Void with carnal warmth should he ask for it.

There are hollow flames in this house and blackened teeth nipping at his neck. Reborn may have encouraged this subversion of roles and revelled in the chaos, but he was by no means a fool. He may be the Sun Arcobaleno, but Tsuna's Void isn't something that can be measured by purity or strength. He'd rather keep his Sun.

\---=&=---

So cold. So, so cold. So empty still.

A Sun remains in his--their, he corrects--midst. A Sun which is so warm, so bright and lethal. Not like his Black Hole Who Was a Sun, and not like his dying star. A Sun, just as any other.

Oh, how Tsuna longs to _break_ and _engulf_ and _swallow, swallow, **swallow**_ that warmth and heat and comfort in his Void. Yet, amazingly, he also longs to _cherish_ , _nurture_ , _bask_ in the _heat_ and _warmth_ too. There is something peculiar about this Sun which makes him different from the others. There is something about this Sun that makes him different from his Black Hole, his wondrous little gluttonous Ryohei. If asked, Tsuna would not be able to articulate exactly why Reborn's Sun was different. One, he is simply too lazy and too uncaring to put a sentiment into words. Two, it is difficult to explain.

The Void wants what it wants, and right now, Tsuna just wants to chase away this aching cold. So, he tugs his tutor close and keeps him around constantly. In his hair, in his arms, on his shoulder or in his lap to leech off the Sun's warmth. Not even the rapidly sweltering weather in Japan can keep the cold away as effectively as this little, destructive Sun can. He wants to see how long it will take until this Sun collapses, burns and caves in. It is new for Tsuna to want something to happen.

It is a curious thing, to be sure, but Tsuna wants to see how it will turn out with this Sun. After all, with flames so strong and powerful, activation can be pushed dangerously close to decay. Tsuna wishes to be there when it happens; the devastation will be so positively charming.

\---=&=---

An assassination attempt by the Varia happens. The Varia are a professional, Vongola-sanctioned assassination squad. This mission of theirs remains an attempt. Reborn sees this as a direct challenge for the title of Vongola Decimo, and from the Nono's own (adopted) son, no less. Tsuna's guardians see this as little more than a slight, but a slight against _their Void_ , nonetheless.

Takeshi's potential as a hitman is truly revealed, but it's not as if it was ever a question in the first place. Lambo remains naive and childish. Kyoya's bloodlust, and Ryohei's in turn, are bolstered. Hayato grins.

The Varia leave Namimori in pieces. The guardians present a broken pacifier to their Void as a trophy. There's a black smear on each of their cheeks.

\---=&=---

Rokudo Mukuro has been on Reborn's radar for a while. He is someone who has evaded even the Vindice for years. He has lived six lives, killed hundreds, and would have made sure the entire Estraneo famiglia ceased to exist had he not been stopped and forced on the run. He is, most definitely, a formidable opponent and a sleazy ally at best.

In another world, Rokudo would have been the last person Reborn would want for Tsuna to bond with as the next Vongola boss. Rokudo would be an opponent, nothing more and nothing less, and he would be met with distrust at every corner among the rest of the Tenth generation. In this one, he is _perfect_. Actually, he's almost _too_ perfect. It's as if he was made for this specific purpose, living through hundreds of thousands of infinite realities, living through the same and similar lives, broken in different ways to gain the same cracks, to be able to become the type of Not-Mist that Void needs.

There is an order of things, in all of those worthless realities. In those, Rokudo Mukuro and his gaggle of estranged Estraneo subjects wreak havoc in Namimori to build fear and coax the Decimo candidate out of hiding. In those, Rokudo wants a fight. He wants a bloody, merciless fight that ends in his victory. He wants to destroy the mafia world by taking over the largest, strongest and most successful mafia of them all--the Vongola. In those worlds, his plans include taking over the Vongola heir's body. It is something that remains mostly unchanged through many universes.

Rokudo doesn't fight here. He doesn't wreak havoc. The first time he tried, he was almost down one stray. Suffice to say, he had learned from that mistake. Thus, he sets up a meeting. It's difficult. Years of survival instincts beaten into their heads, into their subconscious, made them want to turn and run from the hollow Void clinging to every place Tsuna frequents. The Void sticks to walls and floors and ceilings, emanates below-zero temperatures. Its sticky in the same way oil is, slippery and thick. It screams 'threat' and 'danger' but it's also intoxicating in its influence.

He goes through every single guardian, from the Moon to the Comets, before he can even catch a glimpse of the Void. But, by God, was it worth every last inconvenience. Emptiness pours out of his skin, a biting cold settling on every surface, and there's dark matter sputtering out behind his teeth. A wicked gleam shines dully in his brown eyes, so dark they might as well be black. Still, though, apathy lines his face and there's impatient disinterest twitching at his mouth.

The Mist strikes. At once, Ice and Supernova intercept in a well-practised dance. Comets and Black Hole cut off the exits. The Moon steps around him, past the Void, whose expression has remained unchanged. Rokudo is almost impressed. Then, a gun's safety clicks and the nuzzle presses against the spot where his shoulder blades meet his spine.

"What is your business, Rokudo Mukuro?" Reborn asks. His gun presses more firmly against Rokudo's spine. He counts himself impressed. Even the so-called number one hitman has been ensnared by this being, this anomaly.

In another universe, Sawada Tsunayoshi battled with Rokudo Mukuro and won. He promises to change the mafia world, promises to change the ways of the Vongola famiglia for good and return it to its vigilante roots. He promises to never let the Vongola fall back into corrupt tactics or immorality so long as he is the boss. In this universe, Sawada Tsunayoshi promises Rokudo Mukuro revenge, and revenge has always been a human vice.

Mist is strung thin, reshaped and moulded into something softer. It becomes something denser but larger, something more Cloud than Mist, made of gas and ice and miniscule rock, of star dust and metal particles floating in the spaces between stars and solar systems and asteroid belts. There is a place in the Void where stars are born and buried in the same breath, and Rokudo has always been good at death and resurrection with six past lives under his belt and hoping to live another two after this one.

_((Like a cat, who has nine lives and never cares for anything but themselves and their food and pleasure, one who lives life as cautiously as they do recklessly))_

Colours mix together beneath Rokudo's skin. Every time he breathes out, star dust follows, and every time he blinks, a metallic line shimmers beneath his cursed eye. Construction becomes ruin, what was moist and dewy and elusive becomes glittering and otherworldly, and Rokudo becomes Mukuro. What was once Mist swells and swells, and widens, and swells. It becomes solely Nebula. It becomes a thing which belongs only to Void.

As Mist warps in to Nebula, a butterfly perches on a leaf. Far away, in another province in Japan, Nagi dies. She is not saved by Mist, because there is no Mist to save her any longer. Nagi does not become Chrome. The same day which Nagi is saved in another world, is the day she dies in this one. In this world, she dies nameless and friendless and alone.

Mukuro has stars twinkling in his teeth as he shakes Tsunayoshi's hand, a smear of black on his cheekbone and a new weight on his shoulders.

\---=&=---

More people fall. The mafia world is in a panic; the Estraneo is no longer. Reborn retires and not-retires, in a way. He is active but not accepting jobs. The Vongola are losing low-level members and CEDEF associates left and right. Iemitsu Sawada is hospitalised under urgent care in the finest hospital in Sicily. The Yakuza in Japan is held under an invisible thumb. Mafia famiglias are dropping left and right, some linked to the Estraneo and some not.

This continues for a total of two months. Two endless, tiring, confusing months before it ends suddenly. All is still in the mafia world for days, weeks, afterwards, as if waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. When nothing does, people resume schedule. More paranoid, yes, and more wary of their colleagues and connections, but they resume. Life moves on.

The Estraneo famiglia is forgotten, but not forgiven.

\---=&=---

_So cold._

_So, so cold..._

_So empty. Not full, need to be full, why am I not full? I have a full set, why am I **not full?**_

\---=&=---

Tsuna's third year brings about new beginnings, new threats, new opportunities. The threats are pests at best, and are neutralised swiftly by even the weakest of his set. Ryohei especially enjoys taking out threats, swallowing them whole and crushing their souls as he feeds and feeds. Kyoya loves to bite and brawl, and as an Asteroid and Comet alike, he throws the weak ones bruised and beaten to his Void to break and toys with the less weak ones.

Lambo pulls the unsuspecting ones in. Takeshi and Hayato take turns, one pelting and freezing and slicing while the other explodes and sparks. Mukuro takes care of his, as always, and brings the scraps to his Void. Every once in a while, when he gets a notably good poaching, he presents the offerings to his Void like a worshipful servant, getting an ink-stained kiss for his trouble. He treats it like it's the only taste of salvation he'll ever get each time. It is time for them to be pushed, and to survive in the mafia, they will need experience and skill using their dying will flames. Reborn has no doubt in his mind that they could take over without them.

As they are, they're lethal. With dying will flames, they will become unstoppable. Reborn has always been an over-achiever. He begins with the weakest and works his way up. Lambo fights like he lives, impulsive and childish, but that can be corrected with time. Hayato is determined and dying, and his strength comes in bursts of power but when it bursts, it fires up like a shock wave of light.

Takeshi is all instinct, honed and controlled but immature and inexperienced. Distracted, for the time being. Ryohei is next, and Reborn quickly finds that his hunger is an endless pit waiting to be filled. He fights with desperation and tunnel vision, something terrifying and raw that can be corrected but not easily. Mukuro and Kyoya fight like two titans going head-to-head. When they spar, the Earth wilts and shakes. They leave each session bloodthirsty and wounded.

Regrettably, Reborn comes to a cross roads. The only way he can push Tsuna to his limits is to break the seal on his flames--already torn and ripped at the edges, hanging on by valiant threads--and the only way to do that is to shoot him. The last time Reborn used a dying will bullet on the boy, he had thought he'd killed him.

 _((It's almost laughable, now, to think something could kill that heinous_ behemoth _of a Void, distorted and mangled as he is, but oh so_ deadly _all the same))_

This time when Reborn shoots a dying will bullet into Tsuna's skull, the teen gets to his feet and grins something that looks more like bearing teeth and says, "Reborn, I will break every flame on this Earth and fill up my Void with my dying will."

\---=&=---

Being a Sky is a delicate, precarious situation to be in. The harmonisation factor which the flames possess is a potent drug, or even aphrodisiac in some cases, especially when the elements affected are weaker than the Sky themself. To be a Sky, one must master maintaining a certain equilibrium in day to day life.

You must not overwhelm your allies or friends, or the strangers around you, but it is helpful to let out subtle wafts of Sky flames every once in a while. This can make others more receptive to you and, ergo, your arguments or proposals. Sky flames are the rarest of all base seven types. It would make sense, then, for their harmonisation property to be the strongest and most potent depending on the user.

Sky flames harmonise. They naturally encourage cooperation and reconciliation, uniting six very different elements under their rule. The flames produced can be fatal, just as any other flame. They are flames which are highly sought after by many. Harmonisation can do a lot of good, for mafia famiglias and for normal civilians alike.

Harmonisation can also be pushed to the point of atrophy.

\---=&=---

The Vongola mansion is quiet. The servants have made themselves scarce, and the main building is rarely ever used for meetings and the like. It is the living quarters of the Vongola boss and their guardians, and as such, a place to unwind and for their private lives to remain private without sacrificing absolute protection from assassins and enemy famiglias.

Today, Vongola Nono, Timoteo, will be meeting his successor for the first time. His CEDEF adviser, Iemitsu Sawada, sits next to him at the end of the modest table, awaiting the Tenth generation's arrival.

Tsunayoshi walks in like an eldritch abomination on the verge of something horrific, guardians ~~_(set pieces)_~~ falling in place behind him. Reborn leans against a far wall, listening but separate. Immediately, discordant Void strikes harmonious Sky, stabbing and poking and prodding at this Strange Flame He Was Supposed To Be.

A wet shiver runs down Nono and Iemitsu's spines. There is something very, very wrong here. This is not according to plan at all.

Tsunayoshi slides in to place across from Timoteo, all bearing teeth and drooling ink, Void meshing forcefully, frightfully, with Sky. It pushes and pushes back, boxing in the flames from both men simultaneously, cornering top predators like mere bottom-chain feeders. Vongola Nono stares in shock, eyes darting from element to element before finally settling on the boy in the middle--his successor, the next Vongola boss. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again.

"What is this?" The tremor in his voice is well-hidden, but there. Iemitsu is staring at his son like he doesn't know who it is, sitting across from them. It was funny. It was as if he thought he had any business to know who Tsuna was in the first place. "What are you?"

Tsunayoshi smiles, saccharine sweet and dripping oil slick ink from serrated teeth. "I am what you made me."

**Author's Note:**

> Elements and a vague property they have  
> Tsuna - Void, discord/emptiness  
> Hayato - Supernova, integration/creation/rebirth  
> Takeshi - Interstellar Ice, unrest/jittery-ness  
> Ryohei - Black Hole, idleness/hunger  
> Lambo - Moon, flexibility/lethargy  
> Kyoya - Asteroids and Comets, neutralisation/reduction/diminishing  
> Mukuro - Nebula, ruin/disarrangement/resurrection
> 
> leave a review on the way out :) let me know if i missed any tags!


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